When
I was a young man, I wanted to be a journalist so I could help the world. I
thought I could do this by asking questions of the people who supposedly had
the answers, and then conveying those thoughts to the people. Having been
informed, they would then be better able to direct their leaders along paths
that would make life easier for everyone, especially the poorest and
neediest.

You clearly have had a different motivation in becoming a
journalist. Perhaps because you were born at a different time, and matured
when your elders were despairing, your approach to journalism is driven by a
profound cynicism. You are driven to asking questions of those people who are
trying to help the poorest and neediest, like Jack Kemp, and then alerting the
people to abandon hope, all ye who enter there. Your column, which I just
read, makes me wonder what I can possibly do to overcome your despair that
anything is possible.

As I recall, I talked to you at some length as
you prepared for this column. I even called you back once, to better help you
understand my relationship with Jack. Your column only informs your readers
that we are so close as to be indistinguishable, and that therefore Jack is my
puppet, a man who believes that tax cuts can solve all the world's problems.
Is this what we talked about in the interview, Jonathan? Or can it be that you
had this idea before you called, but went through the motions of asking
questions, because something reminds you, tugs at your sleeve, that
journalists are supposed to be seekers of answers, not suppliers.

When
I decided 25 years ago to try to understand why none of the economists I knew
were able to explain why the economy was such a mess, I chose to look at
government as the source of the problem. Others chose to look at the culture,
blaming people. Conservatives blame the poor for using their voting power to
raid the Treasury for tax-and-spend social programs. Liberals blame the rich
for using their voting power to riddle the tax system with loopholes that
exploit the poor. In my focus on government, it was obvious that the two main
levers which could be the source of the problems were taxes and money. Tax
rates could be too high, too low, or just right. Money could inflate, deflate
or be just right. If we could get tax rates and money just right, Jonathan,
then the social pathologies that we blame on the greed of the rich or of the
poor would dissolve, as they have throughout history when government gets
taxes and money just right. Is this too difficult to understand? In making fun
of Jack for fussing about tax cuts and a gold standard, does it occur to you
to wonder why?

Let me put it down here in concrete, about me and Jack.
We have been partners for 20 years. Like a husband is a partner with
his wife. Like a business partner is a partner with his business partner. Like
the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Who can tell who is the puppet and who the
puppeteer in a partnership? They are partners because they find that they two
in combination are greater in effectiveness than the sum of their parts. Like
your mom and dad, Jonathan, and my mom and dad. In our partnership, Jack's and
mine, we discovered early on that I had a tremendous comparative advantage
over him in cooking up political ideas, and he had an incredible advantage
over me in political action, getting people to do things. People actually like
him, where they have serious doubts about me. I had nine new ideas before
breakfast and a dozen thereafter, day after day. But I had nobody willing to
sort through this pile of ideas to figure out which were doable and which were
silly. I did not know how to find such a person until Jack came along. Because
he is a man of action (like Bob Dole, by the way), he quickly saw that he
could use me and my fountain of ideas to achieve the goals that he had set for
himself. At the time, 1976, this meant lowering the unemployment rate in
Buffalo, which was 18%.

Can I remind you that when you asked what
differences we had, and I said at first I could not think of any now? I did
call you back to tell you about a whole range of ideas where we differed, like
the privitization of public housing, but which are so inconsequential that it
took me a while to recall them. It is like a wife being asked what she differs
with her husband on, finally scratching her head and saying she prefers
Puccini to his Wagner. The fact is, Jack and I are as close as we are on so
many things because we talk so often about how we might help the poor and the
needy, with a renaissance of entrepreneurial capitalism. We may be wrong in
what we propose, but we are earnest. Please give us that, young man. And do
not assume that Jack does what I tell him to do. Partnerships do not work that
way. I have in the last 20 years given him 20,000 ideas, and he has discarded
at least 19,000 as being unworkable, or outright nonsensical. Do you get it?
Do you see how it works?

If you don't, but wish to understand, please
call me again. I will never turn away an opportunity to make another
conversion. Even deathbed conversions are welcome. Or if you have a good idea
that you have discovered on how to eliminate poverty and misery and despair on
earth — something your own inquiries have led you to — please share them with
those of us who subscribe to The New Republic on the chance that we
will find serious inquiries on the political economy.